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Miss Lobb walked about with a pleasant air of having done her duty. The two old apple people sat down in a clump of bushes and began to eat fruit which the old man peeled with a small pocketknife. They were radiant, obviously without fear of the Underworld. The Bishop had recovered his composure and was once more pacing out the temples and behaving as if he were suspicious about being overcharged for them. If they were not of the stipulated size he would report them to the agency. Roberto, still shaken, drank Coca Cola. Mario blew his sudden horn at last and we awoke to action once more.

Selinunte

D
OWN THE CURVING
roads we went now, among the almond groves, to where the little port of Empedocles lay glittering in the sun; but not quite. Just before we reach it the main coastal road turns sharply to the right and begins to head away towards the next objective—another cluster of temples in a different situation but set in a countryside which presents a complete contrast to the smiling hillsides we were just leaving. “In about half an hour,” said Deeds, “there will be a sudden deterioration of morale and general good humor. People will get out of sorts and start contradicting one another. Roberto says that it is always along this strip, and he thinks it is due to fatigue and a rather late lunch. I have only experienced it twice, but he says that it happens every
time. Just watch.” In his own view this strange surge of bad humor was due to the sudden conviction that this journey was not only fatiguing but also morally indefensible; nobody should treat Agrigento like that. “We should have given it more time and more thought, not have been rushed through it like marauding Visigoths. Two weeks or two months—that is what it deserves. And then there is also the feeling of surfeit; people suddenly realize just how thick with old monuments of every period the island is. So they get grumpy.”

The astonishing thing is that it fell out exactly as stated. The Bishop's wife crossed swords with the German girl about an open window which allowed the dust to blow in; the Count complained about the shag that Beddoes smoked. While the parent Microscopes said that the lavatories in the cafe had left much to be desired and they would report the matter to the responsible authorities. I was frankly hungry for something better than a box lunch and touched with the Deedsian misgivings about having been a traitor to Agrigento. This is the whole trouble about package travel. Yes, we were all put out, and in Mario's driving mirror we looked like a gaggle of wattle-wagging turkeys. The shadow of the imperfectly grasped Agrigento lay over us.

Nor was the country through which we passed reassuring because of the heat and the dust streaming up from the lorries we passed. Then came a bundle of package-like valleys of green parched smallholdings and so
at last came Selinunte. Mario nosed along the valley towards the sea headland upon which the main part stood, going so very slowly that I felt we were advancing almost on tiptoe. The bone structure of the assembled headlands and valleys was thus revealed to us in a slow sweep and we climbed until at last the bus came out in a clearing of olives over the hazy sea. What a contrast to Agrigento—all sunlit glitter and blueness. Selinunte is stuck in a crisscross of grubby sand dunes crammed into the mouth of a small mosquito-ridden river. A little hardy scrub was all that had managed to surface in these dunes. And yet it was becoming obvious that the array of temples and vestiges was far richer than Agrigento and their disposition more complex and intriguing than anything else we had seen in Sicily. To be hot and in a bad temper was no help, however, and I wondered whether the best time for such a visit would not be at sundown on a full moon. There was in fact a whole city of temples dotted about among the smashed altars and statues. It was as if some had got bored and just wandered off for a stroll among the surrounding dunes only to be silted up and fixed by the sand—this bilious looking tired sand. The landscape was made out of darkish felt. The sky hazed in. The river choked.

Needless to say, here the ascriptions are even more hazy than anywhere else—one could hardly spell out the identity of a single one of these monuments to a heroic past. They stood there in the echoless sand,
glinting with mica, and they gave off a melancholy which was heart wrenching. It was worldless, out of time. Moreover, the heat was quite blistering and there was no scrap of wind to cool the traveler's fevered brow. All this, one felt, was Roberto's fault.… The party took refuge in the diffuse shade of a thorn tree, and Miss Lobb almost went so far as to “have words” with Mario because the Chianti was a bit too warm. So the prophetic words of Deeds came true. But worst of all was the fact that we were now conscious that if we were really going to appreciate this site properly and redeem our casual philistinism at Agrigento it would entail a circuit of about two miles in the burning dunes, the blackish dunes. We betook ourselves to lunch, sitting upon various bits of marble, edged together to stay in the shade. Then the Microscopes went to look at a broken column and were startled by the appearance of a huge snake—probably harmless. They behaved as if Roberto had personally put it there to frighten them.

I decided, however, to shake off both the apathy and the ill temper, and make use at once of Deeds's knowledge of the site and of his stout binoculars. We climbed in the hot sunlight up to the nearest eminence, a sort of Acropolis from which the surrounding country could be studied through the glasses, thus obviating a long walk. I was still acting under advice, for on Selinunte Martine had been fairly explicit, and I had re-read her letters the night before.

Your first impression is one of great loneliness and melancholy; but in a moment you will reflect that what is really wrong with the site is the fact that the headland is not really high enough over the sea, and then that the blocked mouth of the river is responsible for the tatty vegetation and the flies which abound everywhere and the mosquitoes. But this said, the wretched place grows on you as you walk about it.

I came twice, the first time with the children and we wisely waited for evening before embarking on the shuffling scramble to reach the temples, which for want of any clear evidence of their origins are simply labeled by letters of the alphabet, or like the description of a sonnet sequence. Dust and lizards and prickly heat were our portion, and we were glad for straw hats and a thermos with something cold. But as the effort increased so their beauty grew on one, though they obstinately spoke of places much further away like Leptis Magna or Troy. Straggles of prickly pear made a kind of guiding channel. Huge lizards and in one temple a hole full of bats. I had looked them up carefully before setting out but what with the heat they all swam together in a glad haze of dun whiteness. The heat throbbed; it was the pulse of the ancient world still beating somewhere, far away. Even after dark they
were still blazing, for we stayed until sunset on the little promontory just to watch the mithraic animal plunge hissing into the sea.

But I want to recount an incident which happened in a desolate place just near Temple E, which was one of the happier in style and feel. Nevertheless as we approached, from a kind of gully in the sand came the clank of chains and the whistling and straining of breath, as if a human being were wrestling with the Minotaur and having all his bones crushed with the embrace. We advanced, looking around with trepidation and saw that it was a fox caught in a steel trap. It was half-mad with pain and fright and its bloodshot eyes were almost bursting from their sockets. There in the wilderness this poor creature was wrestling with this steel instrument; and of course our approach only increased its terror, which multiplied the terror and dismay of the children. We would have given anything to free it, but at every approach it showed its fierce teeth and hissed at us. The heavy steel trap would not, by the look of it, yield to any but a savage peasant hand, or possibly even a steel bar. It would have been a mercy to dispatch it but we had nothing to hand. And though we examined the whole site there was no trace of a guardian to whom we might report this death struggle. It was a barbaric interlude and it shook us all;
after that the heat and the oppressive silence which succeeded the groans of the poor red fox weighed a ton. And when we returned to the acropolis we were all on the point of tears with vexation and sadness.

I thought of this incident as with the help of the glasses I identified Temple E where it had occurred and admired its stylishness, though it looked from the west rather shorn of its head trimmings—the marble decorations and cornices which Deeds informed me had been carried off to grace the museum in Palermo—a most irritating habit this, common to the archaeologists of all nations.

But apart from cherished details made more vivid by the incidents recorded by Martine the glasses revealed along the sloping hills a really extravagant assemblage of ruins of all kinds, whole sections in tumbled heaps with only one column or two standing. A whole city of confused remains. Only juniper and thorn and lentisk managed to pierce the sand, and of course the prickly pear. We stood for a long time on the quiet grass-covered acropolis trying to feel our way into the meaning of this strangely anonymous town. On each side the crooked profiles of temples and columns stretched away, and there did not seem to be any central marshalling point, a central shrine or acropolis from which they radiated. There must of course have been a heart to the great city but unlike Agrigento we could not map it out by eye—even with probability. Selinunte … the very
name is like a sigh. It is derived from the wild celery stalk which must once have been abundant here.

And as for the question of a center, the guides inform us that there was indeed a central acropolis, very strongly walled and containing many of the temples still extant today. It stood on a low hill as on a platform between two rivers at their point of confluence, and at the point where they flowed into the sea; moreover the mouth of each river formed a lip with a small but serviceable harbor sheltered in it. “When you know that you can at once feel the fresh air rush into the landscape,” said Deeds folding away his glasses carefully. We crept and crawled our way back to join those of the others who had remained obstinately in the shadow of the thorn tree. Having braved the heat we had a somewhat virtuous air as we poured out a little more warmish wine. Deeds, who had done his homework and was clearly quite at home here, proved to me that the archaeologists had really managed to plot out the growth of the town; but our feeling about the lack of a center had also been right in a way for Selinunte started in a scattered and spattered fashion with two main groups of religious buildings. To the west the Sanctuary of Demeter Malophoros—a resonant name indeed. Gradually with increasing prosperity and time the ring broadened and spread itself over the adjoining hills.

At this point Roberto pulled himself up and proposed a visit to the temple of Apollo, unique both for
its size and for the fact that it took so long to build that fashions in building outran the architectural plans. “The total effect is a curious one, for the temple is archaic in style on the east side and classical on the west. It must have reached a height of a hundred feet or more and dominated the other temples, and indeed the whole surrounding area.” Alas! There is nothing left upright, and on the ground just this awkward medley of smashed stones and columns. The prospect of crawling about among them like flies had the effect of unmanning the party and Roberto got no takers for his gallant cultural proposal. I asked how far the Malophoros sanctuary was but was disappointed to discover that it was a full half hour's walk to the west along a footpath leading from the Acropolis. Roberto made a vaguely thoughtful offer to accompany me there, but I rapidly made an excuse that I did not want to hold up the others in the heat; so we straggled in rather ungainly fashion back to the entrance to the ruins where Mario had backed the bus under a tall fig tree—an authentic piece of shade this. Here he had fallen asleep, and so deeply, that
the noise of our arrival did not wake him. We formed an affectionate circle round him watching him sleep with admiration. It is rare to see someone so thoroughly asleep. He lay with a hand across his eyes, his mouth open, very slightly snoring. It was somehow most encouraging and invigorating. All our ill humor slipped from us as we watched this noble man taking his ease. But the noise of a foot upon gravel—or was it perhaps the sheer force of our gaze upon him?—did the trick at last and he woke, blushing deeply to be thus caught napping. Hazily we climbed aboard and implored him to turn on the fresh air vane of the bus. The seats were hot. We started up and nosed our way down into the boiling valley and along to the coast road.

I don't think there was one of us who could have given a coherent account of the next hour's voyaging—we all fell into a leaden sleep, only very vaguely conscious of the wheels of our little bus rubbing along the tarmac. There was sea, and a fresh wind, and there were scattered villages here and there when the horn did its warning work. But the transition in time to a vast and cavernous warehouse in Marsala happened like a piece of
avant-garde
film cutting. The jolt of stopping in the middle of a sort of impromptu cocktail party shocked us awake; for Mario had edged the whole bus into the echoing dark
cave
where, disposed along two vast trestle tables, was a constellation of beautiful bottles of every size and color. We were to take part in a promotional
dégustation
for the famous product of the island. Moreover, our hosts, the packers and shippers, were a large and beaming crowd of big-mustached elderly men who were obviously half-mad with impatience to get at the bottles and were only held back by the laws of etiquette from anticipating our arrival. A united huzza went up as we swung into the cool of the great barn. “My goodness the whole
darn Mafia,” said Beddoes with approval; and out we all got to shake their hands and pat them on the back. A great show of amity followed and it was not long before we were beautifully implicated in studying the varying merits of the wines—one went up and down as if on a keyboard, testing and criticizing the wine. For each of us was to be offered a sample bottle as a present. Beddoes spared no effort to get to the bottom of the matter and played the half-filled sample tumblers as if they were a xylophone.